Likely NIH chief previews Obama’s science plans

I’m sure there are people out there who dislike Dr. Francis Collins, but I have yet to meet one.

He’s a brilliant scientist who discovered the gene for cystic fibrosis. He’s a medical statesman who shepherded the Human Genome Project, ensuring the contents of human DNA are freely available to the world, rather than locked up in patents. And he’s an important Christian scientist who spans the prickly divide between faith and science.

There’s been much ballyhoo about President Obama’s choice for Surgeon General, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. But the NIH director position, although perhaps less visible to the general public, is far more important to this country’s medical future. For starters, Collins will command an annual budget of about $30 billion, and likely much more under Obama.

So it was with great interest that I visited Rice University yesterday afternoon to hear Collins have a dialogue with Neal Lane, a science advisor to President Clinton, about budgets and bioethics. I’ll have more about their bioethics discourse later this week, but for now I want to focus on Obama’s interest in science, and what Collins had to say.

First of all, when asked if he had an announcement for the crowd, Collins answered, “Not today.” His body language suggested to me he was all but assured to become NIH director. He also served as part of Obama’s transition team, and it’s in that capacity he spoke about the new President’s attitude toward science.

Below is Collins’ discussion of how he and Harold Varmus made the case to Obama that investing in scientific research will boost the economy.

We both looked as hard as we could at the data to see if we could make the case that investing in science is good for the economy. The case is extremely strong, stronger than I thought. More than half of the economic growth since World War II has been based on science and technology.

But by every major marker today, with how we’re competing with the rest of the world, we have been losing ground. That’s been especially true in the last five years, when funding for science has been flat in the face of inflation. There is a great, pent-up need for research funding that could be quickly stimulating to our economy.

In a recent report, Families USA found that if you put a $1 into NIH funding, it becomes about $2.50 within one year worth of economic goods and services. If we were to just fund grants that finished in in the top third of proposals received by NIH last year, would have created 50,000 jobs just like that. That case did get made.

And how did Obama respond? Collins cited an economic stimulus bill circulating in the U.S. House that increases funding for NIH by about $3.5 billion, and the National Science Foundation by $3 billion.

You’re already seeing concrete evidence that science is being seen as a potential solution to the economic crisis. And he was not concerned that science might sometime give him answers he didn’t want to hear. That was very encouraging to me.

There are those who will no doubt question whether research funding is the best way to stimulate the economy. But it’s hard to doubt that we need science to attack some of the biggest challenges facing this country, such as energy, lower-cost, better health care and environmental issues.

Collins, by the way, would be a brilliant choice for the NIH director position. He’s already proven his excellent management skills as the genome project’s director. During the next half decade there will no doubt arise significant bioethics issues. (President Clinton grappled with cloning, and President Bush with embryonic stem cells. It’s just the nature of modern biology’s breathtaking breakthroughs.)

There’s probably no better spokesman in the country than Collins for how science can both break through new biological barriers, but also do so in an ethical manner.

20 Responses

Certainly, Dr. Collins is a worthy appointee for NIH. In fact his alleged appointment, if done, will stand in stark contrast to the other science/energy appointments Obama has made. The choices of Chu, Jackson, Lubchenko, Browner, Holdren, and Salazar are just typical politically motivated group think. Perhaps Dr. Collins and a good NASA pick will be the exceptions that prove the rule that Obama cares much less about science objectivity and openness and more about political idealogy.

In a recent report, Families USA found that if you put a $1 into NIH funding, it becomes about $2.50 within one year worth of economic goods and services. If we were to just fund grants that finished in in the top third of proposals received by NIH last year, would have created 50,000 jobs just like that.

I went to Families USA site and they do not state how they came to their conclusions in the report. I don’t believe them. The government sucks the life blood out of the economy, it doesn’t create anything. Artificial markets created by the government are incapable of existing without government support (i.e. throwing more of our money down the hole).

Families USA states on their website, “we have earned a national reputation as an effective voice for health care consumers for 25 years.” Yeah right, for 25 years they’ve managed to stay completely invisible. I know I’ve never heard of them, I’ve never voted for them, and they don’t represent me.

As for the NIH, they are just another government money sink. Government research has given us climate (quack)-science, a NASA that can’t remember it was created to explore space, not play the crackpot weatherman just to name two. It is government that has sunk our economy by enabling Fannie May, Freddie Mac and ACORN, and we are supposed to believe that the NIH is going to save us? Yeah, right.

(Isn’t the CDC part of the NIH? I think it is. The CDC has been politicized for years and been telling PC lies about HIV and AIDs for at least 25 years.)

Investment in basic science and research has always been a fundamental part of technological advancement. We cannot afford to let American researchers languish behind their peers in other countries, especially in light of the fact that foreign students educated in American grad schools aren’t staying here like they used to.

Next time a relative gets new cancer drugs and chemotherapy, remember that. Next time you get a flu shot, remember that. Next time a doctor prescribes medication that cures your illness or improves your quality of life, remember that.

I assume you’re happy to reap the benefits of mediacal science, but are strongly opposed to funding it. Truly, hypocrisy at its finest.

The CDC is absolutely not a “part” of the NIH. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a entity overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services. I, for one, would appreciate some actual information gathering before we begin spouting such nonsense.

FamiliesUSA is, in fact, a well known and well respected advocacy group that supports improving science and health. You demonstrate your own narrow-mindedness when you assume that merely because you’ve never heard of them, they must be some subversive unknown factor.

You tout your “vote” woodNfish- where does your candidate stand on the issue of science policy? Do you know? You might try http://www.yourcongressyourhealth.org to find out, but beware, it’s put together by another invisible advocacy group.

re: Chris – Sure Chris, the only time any medical research gets done in this country is when the NIH does it or funds it. Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, and if you do it often enough maybe it will even come true.

re: PDQPete – The CDC has been telling us and especially children that everyone is at risk of getting AIDs. It simply isn’t true. In the USA AIDs is mainly a homosexual disease. (This isn’t true in Africa.) Sure heterosexuals can get AIDs, but only in extremely rare occurrences does it ever happen through normal heterosexual activities. (And no, I never have believed Magic Johnson’s excuse.)

re: HNL – Thank you for answering my question about the CDC.

As far as Families USA goes, I don’t care who they are; they don’t represent me, and they obviously are not well known because I’ve never heard of them. (And if I’ve never heard of them then they are not worth knowing.)

These advocacy groups are a pox on the democratic process, and I’d like to see all NGOs done away with.

An advocate of banning by IP

I agree. Eric, please ban Mike’s IP.

(You’re lucky Eric doesn’t censor comments on this blog, Mike. Stop trying to squelch other people just because you don’t like what they have to say.)

Dr. Francis Collins has indeed earned his stripes as an accomplished geneticist and director of the Human Genome Project. And, as long as he keeps his BioLogos out of departmental policies, we salute Obama’s brilliant choice for NIH Director, as we do his choices of Dr. Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General, Jane Lubchenco as head of NOAA, John Holdren as Presidential Science Advisor, and Dr. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary.

“We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost,” is Obama’s key phrase, and it contains a multitude of subtle points.

“Rightful place” is at first a dig at George W. Bush’s sidelining of scientific thinking during his two presidential terms. It’s no secret that Bush’s personal beliefs pushed many science issues into the background, and Obama’s words suggest he holds science in higher regard for its role in our modern world. Wielding “technology’s wonders” is immediately a powerful phrase underlining the benefits that science and technology can bring, and it is specifically referenced in terms of improving health care. Obama Promises Science-Centric, Eco-Friendly Presidency

Yes, thank Education, the climate is indeed changing.

Says environmental scientist Donald Kennedy, Stanford University’s president-emeritus: “I think we are seeing some really good first steps, appointment of people that the science community takes seriously, people who value science.” Scientific climate is changing as Obama takes office

Ni Hao! Happy Year of the OxBe ready for four years of smokescreen and as I think you Texans call it “pure BS” from this administration, particularly when it comes to science, no change from the last disaster, but packaged better to trigger self interest, fool the sheep and lemmings, and waste more precious resources.…..Families USA found that if you put a $1 into NIH funding, it becomes about $2.50 within one year worth of economic goods and services.Putting $1 in many places will potentially yield such a short term return in the economy. Throwing it into the mindless assembly line of repetitive, me-tooism data production that a great majority of science has become without a revolution in funding innovation and frontier individual- and hypothesis-driven science is indeed short term, will have little impact more than a year. It is indeed open for criticism that it is a sophisticated “welfare” system of largely busy workers and unproductive science. Investment in real basic science as the traditional R01 grant of small teams will indeed produce $2.50 or more for the long term, but that is not where the money will be directed as already declared in the following Nature commentary:Cash boost for US science: Nature News.”… The National Institutes of Health (NIH) would receive $3.5 billion, of which $1.5 billion would be for research at NIH centres over two years; $1.5 billion for building grants at university research facilities; and $500 million for construction on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. “”… Elias Zerhouni, former director of the NIH, says the stimulus package does not focus enough on sustaining scientists, concentrating instead on the facilities that house them. The current proposal “is too timid and not strategic enough in addressing the long term”, he says. “It’s short-term wise but long-term ineffective.”"A right on target commenter remarked:The NIH spending plan sounds like a perfect example of something that will only exacerbate current biomedical research funding problems. If NIH spends its windfall building new facilities, who is going to work in them? And even if people are hired to fill these shiny new labs, how will the research these new people do get paid for? New facilities and investigators will further increase the demand on already too-limited NIH funding and cause application success rates to plummet even more than they have. NIH should use all of the money to fund worthy extramural projects, not make a bigger nest in need of future feathering. 21 Jan, 2009; David FeatherstoneSounds like more of the same to me, a George W. Bush III administration of lightweight smoother talkers with no clue or intention of making change required to meet the challenges of the long term future.Member MOTYR GroupPS. Whatever happened to the Texas Cancer Research Initiative?

Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources–it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient–especially when it’s inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States–and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.

… esp. after what so many dedicated scientists have had to endure the last 8 years.

In a nation of paradoxes, this is one of the strangest. America leads the world in science and technology, yet its political leadership often seems detached from its scientific expertise. Indeed, the Bush administration has acquired a reputation for treating science with disdain.

Why this should matter to Americans and to the rest of the world is clear: the prosperity and security of the US is closely tied to its role as a science and technology leader. At the same time, decisions made by the federal government on issues such as climate change, public health and basic research clearly reverberate far beyond the nation’s borders.

“Having the science adviser in place early is going to be critical,” says Joanne Carney of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “It means that an individual can play a role in placing other key scientists throughout the federal agencies.” Who will end the war on science

Obama says: “promoting science isn’t just about providing resources–it’s about protecting free and open inquiry”, yet he picks strict political idealogues and radical left wing scientists with just one view of the science who silence and reject opposing views.

Annnnnnnd Obama says: “Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us.” Yet he picks Chu, Holdren, Lubchenko, Jackson, Browner, and Salazar who think AGW is a scientific fact with no search for anything necessary, just radical political policy action to save the world.

Hunter, Dr. J, You both know that Obama cut his political teeth on one of the most corrupt political towns in the US – Chicago. He kicked off his campaign in the living room of two admitted terrorist Ayers and Doehn. He spent 20 years in the church of a black anti-American racist, took in millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions, and the list goes on. The MSM ignored and glossed over all these things to put their man in the White House.

A recent survey of college students who voted for Obama showed that most of them thought the Republicans controlled Congress for the last 4 years. I think PEW Research, a non-partisan organization, according to all the MSM, (yeah, I believe that!) did the survey.)

I won’t even get into the financial shenanigans of the jackasses (Democrats – the jackass is their symbol, right?) in Congress that led to our economic collapse.

The moral of this sad story is to never underestimate the power of large groups of stupid people.